Places and Persons

...The sign of the cross is the most natural gesture of these people...

...Everyone else was eating mole (which is stewed turkey in a heavy spiced sauce), tamales made with chicken and chile, enchilades, tortillas, salads and beer...

...Coming out after Benediction, I tried to find out, asking in my Mexico City Spanish which is hard for these Indians to understand...

...All the people had palms...

...On Palm Sunday Soledad and I attended Mass at the parish church, which is as large as the church of St...

...There is only one door and one window in the house so that it is dusky and cool and I must write outside with my typewriter propped up on a stone wall where melons and squashes are ripening in the sun...

...Sunday is a day in Xochimilco when every man, woman and child works, the women selling food and flowers, and the men and boys poling picnickers along the lagoons, and I wondered if this were the reason for the lavish celebration of Easter Monday...

...It is not just of pious people I am writing...

...I wondered, as the Mass went on, how these people could celebrate the Resurrection of Christ more gloriously than they did this day of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem...

...Every morning boats bring into Mexico City vegetables and flowers, but this day booths were erected in the fields all along the canal for several miles, merry-go-rounds, dancing pavilions, ferris wheels and open air restaurants were set up, and business began at five...

...Babies who were not yet able to crawl and were in no danger of rolling down the steps, were laid at the foot of the altar to kick blissfully throughout the long service...

...It was crowded to suffocation, the Mass was long and wearisome, and worst of all I had left my missal in the city and had only a tiny prayerbook which omitted the Epistle and Gospel of the day...

...During the Gloria in Excelsis little Indian boys appeared at windows high up above the altars, looking like cherubs painted there, and came to life to hurl down handfuls of roses and poppies which fell softly before the altar...

...We have finished our morning's work, or rather we have finished what we were allowed to do...

...The church was packed, so crowded that people were sitting on the foot of the altar rail, on every inch of the floor and on the steps of all the other altars around the church...

...People hereabouts think it most scandalous that a stranger should do her own work...

...Later, of course, there would be joy and happiness too...

...Then after a long interval, while the organ played, the huge doors, fifteen feet high, opened, letting in a flood of sunlight...

...Another said, "It is the Pascua...

...Everyone was carrying bunches of small radishes with their bouquets of flowers, and eating them as they walked along...

...Then we sat down at a wayside restaurant for a breakfast of tamales, pancakes and coffee...

...In a few minutes, to gay and joyful music, the three priests came out in their white and gold robes, and showers of blossoms of all kinds began to float down through the church in steadily increasing density...

...296 THE COMMONWEAL July 16, 1930 Places and Persons SPRING FESTIVAL IN MEXICO By DOROTHY DAY LAST Friday was the Friday of Sorrows, the day of the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin, and, though in the churches at the solemn high Masses celebrated, the people hid their faces in their rebozos and serapes and wept, in the early morning the day was celebrated as one of the most colorful fiestas of the year...

...At the end, one kisses one's hand which has traced the sacred sign...

...It is of the majority, 80 or 90 percent of the people in Mexico...

...Nevertheless, it was a tremendously uplifting and glorious spectacle, and my eyes were filled with tears often...

...The city streets were deserted and we thought that no one was up yet...

...The richer (I do not like to say the better) class remained in their closed cars and looked out upon the scene...

...As Soledad has an unfortunate habit of dropping half the dishes to the bottom of the lagoon, or breaking them by scrubbing them too vigorously, I wash the dishes while she cleans house...

...It was very cold as we left our apartment in the city and drove out to Santa Anita, which is only a mile or so away from the centre of town...

...One small boy said, "It is the feast of Christo Rey...

...The steady storm of blossoms was coming from five other apertures in the domes of the church...

...There were the Indians from the surrounding pueblas, sitting along the canal and selling their wares, middleclass Mexican families with their many children, charros on horseback, women with poblana dresses glittering with sequins, and many soldiers and officers with their girls...

...In the midst of it, Senora Torres, my landlady, came and took the escobeta out of my July 16, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 297 hand and refused to allow me to continue...

...The men selling the little wooden boats, which are mounted on a stick, have them all stuck in one large radish and the effect is very gay...

...She got directly beneath the falling blossoms at the back of the church and she and a little Indian boy swept the petals around them into piles and tossed blossoms at each other gleefully...

...And a nice old Indian, who could not understand my questions about the black Christ, told me it was the Monday of Poppies and the feast of the Resurrection too...

...Francis Xavier in New York...

...On the other two sides there is the lagoon, where my funny flat-bottomed boat is tied to the bank...

...The eggs are thrown, too, like confetti...

...Most people do their cooking, too, over a tin charcoal stove, but we are more luxurious and have an oil stove...

...The government, regarding the will of the people, makes holidays of these holy days...

...We usually stop there for a moment and I watch with enjoyment Soledad's endeavor to teach Teresa to cross herself in the Mexican way...

...Religion is part of their life...

...Sometimes this is repeated three times in honor of the Blessed Trinity, or of Jesus, Mary and Joseph...

...The radishes here are both small and large, the latter over a foot long and several inches thick...

...But when we got to Santa Anita there were literally thousands and thousands of people from the city, and the cobbled streets of the little puebla were so jammed with cars and trucks of people that it was impossible to move any further in the cab, so we got out to walk...

...The period from the Friday of Sorrows through Easter is called the Spring Festival, and advertised in the newspapers and on billboards about the town as such...

...One has a peculiar dissipated feeling after an early morning fiesta of this sort...

...The fiesta begins at five in the morning at Santa Anita on the Viga Canal which goes from Xochimilco Lake into the city...

...For once Teresa was perfectly happy to sit through the long service...

...The Mass was being said at the altar of the black Christ, blacker by far than any of the Indians in the congregation...

...On our way to the plaza to do the day's marketing there is a little chapel of Santa Crucita, another of San Christobel and then the big parish church facing the market...

...One of the customs of the fiesta is to buy eggs that have been emptied, colored, filled with water and covered with heavy gilt paper pasted over the top, and to crash these on your companion's heads...

...It seemed impossible, but the procession was able to pass through the church to the rear, and out the side doors...

...But the government does not succeed in making people disregard the religious significance of the days...

...At the doors three life-sized figures of Christ, one crowned with thorns, one after His scourging, and one carrying His cross, a grim reminder of what was to come, met the incoming procession...

...All the seats in the church were taken and we had to find a place for ourselves on the floor as usual...

...Through all the Mass petals of carnations, violets, roses and poppies and shreds of calla lilies came floating through the air, falling on everyone, until the flowers were so heaped up around us, that there was actually a wet sound of falling petals...

...I sat on the Gospel side of the altar of San Antonio, just where the feet of the priest had worn the carpet thin...

...Most of the palms were six feet tall, so the church was like a field of wheat, blossoming with flowers, waving and stirring triumphantly...

...People of every class attend this fiesta at Santa Anita...

...The churches are full...

...The music was very gay...

...I wrote the above at ten o'clock this Easter Monday morning and then the church bells began ringing so merrily and the firecrackers in the plaza, which had awakened us at dawn, became so noisy, that I had to venture out to see what the celebration was all about...

...If she can afford to pay ten dollars a month for a house (three times what they consider it to be worth) and two fifty for a boat, surely she should have enough servants to do her work for her...

...So Senora Torres, who comes at seven every morning with the milk and eggs, sweeps out the patio, picks a bowl of flowers for me and insists on helping unless I hide the dishes until after she goes...

...It was my pleasure too, but she could not understand that...

...Not palms such as we have in New York, but palms braided and plaited and woven into crosses, little altars, long plumes and the semblance of stalks of flowers, and interwoven with flowers of every color and delicious odor...

...My pleasure," she kept insisting...

...Here the large sign of the cross is made first, then traced on the forehead, the mouth and the breast, and then the large sign of the cross again...

...My little stone house in Xochimilco has a thatched roof, and geraniums, roses and cactus grow over the walls which bound my ten acres on two sides...

...We had spent three hours on Good Friday in a sad gloomy church, and Easter Sunday we had attended the high Mass, which as I had expected, was nowhere near as glorious as that of Palm Sunday...

...So it was with the proper subdued feeling that I assisted at the ten o'clock Mass in honor of Our Lady of Sorrows...

...There were violins, violas and flutes beside the organ, and I strongly suspect grand opera music was being played...

...And now it was Monday and the cobbled roads and paths across fields to the church were filled with gayly dressed Indians, children in pink and blue satin, the men in white cotton and linen colored blouses...

...That afternoon, Soledad, Teresa and I went to the country for the rest of the holiday...

...Gaiety is more natural to us Anglo-Saxons in the evening...

...The pancakes were impossible but the tamales were delicious and there were sweet ones for Teresa, so that her breakfast was just as good as though she had had sensible corn meal mush...

...Another thing everyone buys is a little wooden boat with a wax man and woman in national costume, surrounded by beautifully colored wax vegetables—the cabbages, cauliflowers, squashes, radishes and lettuce, very large in proportion to the figures...

...It looks, at first, a long and complicated process...

...When the priests went up to the altar, the people raised their palms on high so that one could see only the palms and the dark, gleaming faces of the Mexicans, uplifted like the palms, radiant...

...When they are washed—they are of Mexican wear, the color of terra cotta, but shiny—they are hung on the outside wall of the house in the sun...

...As everyone else did, we bought wreaths of flowers and garlands to hang around our necks, made of gladiola blossoms of delicious colors...

...There was much dancing and riding on merryrgo-rounds and ferris wheels—this at six o'clock in the morning...